Chicago Cubs Lineup (4/11/26): Hoerner Bats First, Conforto in RF, Cabrera Starting
Well, it didn’t take long for the good vibes of consecutive victories to vanish like a fart in the wind blowing in from left field. Shōta Imanaga tossed six hitless innings, but he would have needed to limit the Pirates to -1 runs in order for the Cubs to have won. Friday was their second shutout loss at Wrigley this season, one more than they had all of last year, and we’re only 13 games in.
Edward Cabrera has yet to allow a run through two starts, and he’s only given up one hit in each of those outings. The six walks, five of which came against the Guardians, would be worrisome if not for the lack of hits. He’s going to have to tighten up the control, though, as his .077 BABIP against tells us that a lot more balls will be falling for hits soon.
It’s early yet, but the Cubs have Cabrera throwing a lot more changeups than ever before. It makes up over 40% of his repertoire, with the sinker, slider, and curve seeing a reduction in usage from last year with the Marlins. Some of that could be matchup-based, but Cabrera’s hard stuff was always inconsistent and needed to be reconfigured. By throwing his four-seam and sinker as secondaries, he can get them to play up a little more.
He’s been great so far at keeping the fastballs up in the zone and locating the change down. As long as he can throw a few more strikes, he should be able to maintain an ace-level performance. Now we just hope he doesn’t have to do that this afternoon. I mean, yes, it would be nice for Cabrera to blow the Pirates away, but the bats need to pull their weight.
Nico Hoerner is leading off at second, followed by Michael Busch at first, Alex Bregman at third, and Ian Happ in left. Moisés Ballesteros is the DH, then it’s Pete Crow-Armstrong in center, Miguel Amaya at catcher, and Michael Conforto in right. Dansby Swanson rounds things out at short.
They’re facing righty Braxton Ashcraft, who squared off against Cade Horton in the injured Cub’s first start at Triple-A last year and then made his MLB debut about two weeks after Horton. Ashcraft has made some adjustments of his own this season, swapping his changeup for a splitter and dialing back his slider usage in favor of more sinkers. He has also reduced his arm angle slightly, something I’ve been noting in most of these early scouting reports.
The results have been good so far, though regression could be around the corner because Ashcraft doesn’t miss a lot of bats and has given up a lot of hard contact. The 26-year-old tends to leave his 96-97 mph fastball right in the heart of the zone, and his breaking stuff tends to miss low and/or glove-side quite often. That leads to long at-bats and shorter outings, though he’s managed to go six in both starts this season.
His balanced repertoire means the splits aren’t huge against him, though left-handed batters tend to see him a little better. He pitched well against the Cubs last year, going 0-1 with only four earned runs allowed in 11 innings over three appearances. He had 10 strikeouts to just two walks, but allowed a homer to Busch and a pair of doubles to PCA. Seiya Suzuki, who will alternate time in right while he recovers from his knee injury, and Swanson also doubled against him.
The Cubs should produce a good deal of contact in this one, so it’ll come down to whether or not they can actually string hits together this afternoon. Their power could be mitigated by a strong breeze blowing in from right, making base knocks and baserunning that much more important. First pitch is at 1:20 pm CT on Marquee and The Score.
